The Mega Mech came to a knee and powered down. As the engines whined to a stop, and the hydraulics blasted out excess air, a hatch on its back opened and Augustus Cole poked his head out.
“I heard someone needed a rescue. That wouldn’t be you two rookies, would it?”
Kait grinned despite herself, and motioned for him to come down. Marcus came around from the back of the vehicle, as did Salvador. To Kait’s surprise, the old Outsider lit up at the sight of Cole and walked straight to him, thrusting out a hand.
“You’re Augustus Cole!” he said, sounding awed. Cole was used to this, though, and he already had his personal charm turned on, taking the greeting in stride. They shook, talking thrashball for several minutes while Marcus and Del spoke with the drivers of the two new Minotaur arrivals.
Kait decided to leave Sal to his meet-and-greet, walking over to join the discussion of the matter at hand.
“—tow the other vehicle back,” one of the driver’s was saying. It was Lovings, she realized. Which meant he’d made it to New Ephyra, then immediately volunteered to come back.
The poor guy must be exhausted.
Marcus shook his head. “Leave ’em both here. They’ll only slow us down.”
“Orders were to bring them back,” Lovings said apologetically.
“The one back there is immovable, Lovings,” Kait said. “Every tire is flat. It’ll be like dragging a ten-ton slab of rock.”
“But the lead truck can still roll?” he asked.
Grudgingly, Kait nodded. Lovings gestured toward her, but looked at Del, as if to say Kait’s words proved his point.
“Look, if one can’t move, we leave it. I’m okay with that—but we have to try with the other. Orders are orders. We’re already down to just a few vehicles back at the city. Even if they can’t get it running, it can be stripped for parts.”
“Fine,” Del said, the fight gone out of him. “Then get everyone into one of your trucks, and send it on ahead. Kait and I can drive your other, towing the wreck.”
“We should stick together,” Marcus said.
“Thought you were just here as an observer?” Del said.
“I’m an observer when it gets me out of doing something I don’t feel like doing.”
Del could only laugh, despite himself.
Marcus went on. “We’ve got two working Minotaurs.Something happens to one of them, everyone will need to pile into the other. Can’t do that if you two are trailing miles behind.”
Del glanced at Kait, looking for support, but she had to disappoint him.
“Marcus is right. We should stick together.” He stared at her for a second longer, then lifted his shoulders.
“Okay, you guys win. Let’s move out. Cole, take point?”
“You got it, baby,” Cole said, and he gave Pasco a fist-bump to conclude their little fan fest, before turning and climbing back into his giant mechanical suit. The Outsiders were split between the two functional trucks. Lovings had brought rations and water, which they divided among themselves.
The broken-down Minotaur was connected to one of the functioning ones via a length of heavy iron chain.
“Marcus and I will take the lead truck,” Lovings suggested. “Can you and Kait handle the other?”
“Sounds good,” Kait answered.
As Cole walked ahead of their caravan, his big mech suit shaking the ground with each step, Lovings and Del followed. The pace started out slow, and for a while things seemed to be working. Once they took their first corner, however, the towed vehicle went sliding into a rocky mound beside the road. The force of the impact sent it twisting and skidding back the other way, and Del had to slow to a careful stop.
They got out and checked the chain. It was still connected. Kait knelt beside it. The links were old and rusted in places.
“A few more twists like that and it’ll snap.”
“One of us needs to steer the broken Mino,” Del said, “keep it on course.”
“Yeah, agreed,” Kait said. “I’ll do it.”
He nodded. Kait climbed into the damaged vehicle and settled into the driver’s seat. It was unnerving without power. The whole cabin was dark, save for a small broken window in front of her where she could see nothing but the back of Del’s truck.
“Hang on a second,” she said into her comm. The group waited while she took a screwdriver from the toolbox behind the seat, climbed out, and removed the armored panel that covered the windshield.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Del asked.
“I can’t steer this thing if I can’t even see which way you’re turning, can I?”
“Guess not.”
She threw the slab of steel onto the side of the road, tucked the screwdriver into a pocket, and returned to the seat.
“Can we go now?” Cole asked, but it was a rhetorical question. He was already moving.
They drove for an hour before the first hints of the Great Seran Rend became visible. Kait hadn’t paid much attention to it on the drive to Pasco’s Village. It had been foggy, for one thing, and she’d been engrossed in her own thoughts, waging a mental battle with the visions that had plagued her these last few weeks.
Now, the sight took her breath away.
Twenty miles wide and almost four hundred miles long, the Rend was a great crack in the world that had almost entirely filled in over the millennia. “Almost” being the key word. How deep the original crack was, or what could have caused it, she had no idea—and wasn’t sure anyone else did, either. Over time, sediment from a saline lake—long ago dried and vanished—and dust had piled back in, slowly but surely hiding the Rend’s true depth.
The result was hard to even recognize as a canyon. What remained was a cliff on each side, with miles of an almost perfectly flat mixture of salt and hard-pack soil that lay between. The cliffs themselves weren’t like solid walls. Far from it. Thousands of ravines ran outward from the Rend’s edges, like veins on a leaf.
Or, Kait thought, like stitches on a scar.
The comm crackled. “Delta Squad, this is Baird.”
“Go ahead, Control,” Del replied over his connection.
“No, it’s Baird. Control is… never mind, you did that on purpose. Funny, by the way! So very, very funny.”
“What is it, Baird?” Marcus said.
“Slight change of plans—and don’t roll your eyes, I know you all are. Listen, we lost a Condor a few days back. Some kind of malfunction. It’s possible—and I stress possible—that the crash was due to Swarm interference. The crew all made it out safely, but the plane went down in the Rend.”
“What’s this got to do with us?” Marcus asked.
“I’ve spotted the wreck—sorry, IRIS spotted the wreck… thanks for the correction, by the way, dear—IRIS spotted it via a targeting satellite, and the cockpit looks intact. I need you to recover the flight recorder. Might get some valuable data on how this interference works.”
“You said ‘possible’ interference. Going to detour us for ‘possible’?”
“Well, if you want to get technical, it’s one hundred percent possible.”
Del let out a single, sardonic bark of a laugh. “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘definitely.’ Definitely caused by Swarm interference.”
“Semantics!”
“Not really!”
“Fine,” Marcus said to cut them off. “We’ll check it out.”
“Thanks, team. Baird out.”
Up ahead the road forked. The original path, which they’d taken to reach Pasco’s Village, veered off to the left, going around the Rend. Another road went right, toward the nearest of the ravines that descended into the basin.
Cole went right. Lovings followed without question.
Kait tapped her comm. “How much time is this going to add to our return, Baird? We’ve got civilians with us, remember.” Technically she was a civilian, too, but she decided not to go into that.
“Theoretically it’s a shortcut,” Baird answered.
“Theoretically?”
“Depends on the state of the basin. Varies between dry and flat—best road you’ve ever been on—to wet and muddy, like a foot-thick layer of pudding.”
She considered that, and decided it was worth the gamble.
“What was the aircraft’s cargo?”
“A squad of Tri-Shot DR-1s, plus support.”
Combat-ready robots. Great. It took effort for Kait not to swear.
“Got a bad feeling about this,” she said, more to herself, but the comm was still on.
“Orders are orders,” Cole said. “Let’s get it done so we can go home. Besides, it’s a shortcut, isn’t it?”
“Theoretically,” Lovings repeated.